Obama called Putin 5 days after it was announced he had won the election. That’s actually a pretty big snub.

There’s a difference between calling someone and calling someone to congratulate them. Knoller describes it as a call to “congratulate”, but only in a Tweet. Maybe it was, but other reports suggest that Obama’s administration has gone to lengths to avoid describing it in such terms.

Obama had to call Putin at some point. Russia is one of the world’s largest economies and Obama has worked hard on a “reset” for Russian-US relations. By this point many other world leaders have already called the Russian leader, some offering much clearer “congratulations”.